Timothy Souders

Another Prisoner With Mental Illness Dies in Isolation

Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

A story on Thursday in the Alexandria (Virginia) Gazette Packet begins: “Did health-care providers at city jail leave a mentally ill inmate to die in 2008? That’s the allegation at the center of a wrongful death lawsuit filed last week in the Eastern District of Virginia, charging the jail’s medical services violated the constitutional provision against […]

Prison Heat: Hunger Strike Highlights Summer's Deadly Toll on U.S. Inmates

James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

As heatwaves swept the Northeast earlier this month, 30 inmates in solitary confinement at New Hampshire State Prison went on hunger strike to protest stifling temperatures inside the prison’s Special Housing Unit. According to the Concord Monitor, “Inmates in SHU cannot open windows and must remain in their cells, usually alone, for 23 hours a day. Unlike inmates in […]